Personal Energy Orb Makes You Cycle Before You Can Use Your PC

Spending ungodly amounts of time in sitting in front of a PC is bad for you. Mkay? But yeah, you’re lazy, we get it, so as always technology comes to the rescue. Developed by two students at the University of Munich for a physical computing course, the Personal Energy Orb is an Arduino-based device that keeps track of how much you’ve cycled, and rewards your efforts by letting you use your computer properly. An LED-filled orb is attached to your handlebars, while a revolution counter keeps track of distance traveled. The more you pedal, the more the orb shifts to green. Come back home with a fully green orb and you can use your PC normally. A red orb on the other hand means that Windows will set the mouse sensitivity to its lowest setting, annoying the heck out of you until you decide to either throw the whole thing in the garbage, or actually go outside for some activity.

Considering it’s a school project, the two students were happy to see that it did in fact work, though it wasn’t without its occasional hiccups, mostly battery related. As for commercialization, there doesn’t seem to be any clears plans for that.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.